Food Fight: Does Healthy Food Have to Be More Expensive?

Last month a food fight erupted when Anthony Bourdain, chef, author, and host of the Travel Channel’s “No Reservations”, was asked by TV Guide to give his opinion of a handful of celebrity chefs and cooks. Of cooking show host Paula Deen, he criticized how unhealthy her food is, saying, “If I were on at seven at night and loved by millions of people at every age, I would think twice before telling an already obese nation that it’s okay to eat food that is killing us.”

Deen responded, saying, “…not everybody can afford to pay $58 for prime rib or $650 for a bottle of wine…I cook for regular families who worry about feeding their kids and paying the bills…It wasn’t that long ago that I was struggling to feed my family, too.”

Food for the working class
You can click the links to read their accusations about “unholy connections with evil corporations,” food that sucks, and lack of charity, but what interested me was what was being said about the affordability of good food. Deen didn’t claim her food was healthy, she countered that it was for the working class. Bourdain, for his part, was accused of “culinary elitism” in the New York Times. Columnist Frank Bruni writes:

“[Deen is a champion] of downscale cooking that’s usually more affordable and easier to master” and that his own personal preferences, “…don’t entitle me, Bourdain or anyone else who trots the globe and visits ambitious restaurants — the most casual of which can cost $50 a person and entail hour-long waits — to look down on food lovers without the resources, opportunity or inclination for that.”

TV Guide knew what they’d get when they asked him to weigh in on celebrity cooks from The Food Network — that’s no surprise. What is surprising to me is the accusation of elitism and the notion that poor people can’t afford to cook healthier food.

Full disclosure: I’m a fan of Tony Bourdain. I’ve never seen Paula Deen’s show, though I’ve read some (but haven’t cooked any) of her recipes.

Of the former, I have to wonder if Deen or Bruni have ever seen Bourdain’s show. He rarely goes to fancy restaurants in “No Reservations”, preferring the following kinds of eateries:

Street vendors

Markets

Pubs

Diners

Cafes

Meals cooked by his local guide’s grandma (As an independent traveler without a personal guide, those family meals make me green with envy.)

Of the latter, I wondered if it’s really a matter of affording the ingredients. To be clear, I’m not arguing that poor people can afford organic food from Whole Foods or spend hours in the kitchen making a gourmet meal. But if you’re planning to cook one of Deen’s recipes, you have to purchase ingredients. Preparing them in an unhealthy way (fried, tons of sugar, unnecessary gobs of butter) doesn’t save money over grilling, broiling, or steaming.

Bruni also argued that “when Deen fries a chicken, many of us balk. When the Manhattan chefs David Chang or Andrew Carmellini do, we grovel for reservations and swoon over the homey exhilaration of it all.” But Bourdain’s point was that millions tune into Deen and buy her books, while most people have never heard of David Chang. She has a massive audience, and if her audience is the working poor, as she implies, who are more likely to be obese, his statement seems all the more valid.

Working with what you’ve got
While everyone was weighing in on the Tony vs. Paula debate, Bourdain was on vacation with his family. Later he addressed the topic in a post on his blog:

“…the best cooks and often the best chefs come from the poorest or most challenging regions. And it is without doubt that the greatest, most beloved and iconic dishes in the pantheon of gastronomy in any of the world’s mother cuisines — French, Italian, or Chinese — originated with poor, hard-pressed, hard-working farmers and laborers with no time, little money, and no refrigeration.

…French cooking, we tend to forget now, was rarely (for the majority of Frenchmen) about the best or the priciest or even the freshest ingredients. It was about taking what little you had or could afford and turning it into something delicious without interfering with the grim necessities of work and survival. The people I’m talking about here didn’t have money or time to cook…the notion that hard-working, hard-pressed families with little time and slim budgets have to eat crappy, processed food or that unspeakably, proudly unhealthy ‘novelty dishes’ that come from nowhere but the fevered imaginations of marketing departments are — or should be — the lot of the working poor is nonsense…”

Mac and cheese is a good dish, he says, and deep-frying it doesn’t make it better or more affordable.

Kentucky Fried Chicken and the $10 Challenge
This debate reminded me of a 2008 KFC commercial about the “KFC $10 challenge”. A family goes into a grocery store to recreate a KFC meal, and when the grocery bill winds up being more than $10, the cost of the 7-piece meal from KFC, the mom announces that they’re going to KFC instead.

Grist writer Kurt Michael Friese took KFC’s challenge. He went to a local supermarket and bought hormone-free chicken and the ingredients for biscuits, mashed potatoes, and gravy. His results:

The KFC meal was $10.58, which included Iowa state taxes.

He made the same meal at home for $7.94.

When he used more organic ingredients, the home-cooked meal cost $10.62.

I want to reiterate that I’m not talking about people so poor that they can’t afford a $7.94 meal. I’m more curious about why cooking at home is given the rep of being more expensive (clearly it’s not) and why cooking healthier food is considered out-of-reach for the working poor. Obviously KFC has a good reason to mislead American families, but how can those in the culinary world argue that people without means are “consigned to overloads of animal fat” (as opposed to those who simply choose to eat it), as Bruni wrote?

What do you think? Is it a matter of time, convenience, know-how, or availability of good ingredients? I’d especially love to hear from those of you who manage to eat well on a strict budget.

Fresh, whole foods can be very cheap compared to packaged and fast food. Even more so if you can give up meat. Yes, more effort but if you cook in bulk (e.g. with a slow cooker) you can freeze some to eat later.

It can be affordable, if you live in the suburbs and can get to a large grocery store. If you live in the city however, you don’t usually have access to large grocery stores that sell items cheap. Poor people don’t have cars and use public transportation. Can you carry 5 bags of cheap groceries home on a bus by yourself with 5 kids? I doubt it.

In the city, instead of grocery stores there are convenience stores on street corners that sell a can of soup for $4.50. That same can of soup could be $1.50 at a large grocery store in the suburbs, but not in the city.

Poor people don’t always have the same options you take for granted, like large cheap grocery stores or cars. Poor people are called poor for a reason – they lack things. They are forced to do without. They do not own slow cookers, because they can only afford maybe one pan or pot to cook in. They don’t have Food Network and cannot afford a cookbook, so maybe they don’t know how to cook even.

It’s not cut and dried, black and white for everyone. It’s not just a matter of buying conventional vs organic to save money for these people – it’s a matter of being forced to pay $4.50 for a can of soup (because you only have access to a convenience store) when you only get $30 in food stamps a week and you have to feed five people. It’s pretty difficult to justify riding a bus 3 hours roundtrip to a suburban grocery store, when you don’t have 3 hours to spend doing that. Many poor people work so many hours to try to make ends meet that they simply do not have the time left to make an excursion like that (or simply cannot afford the extra $10 in bus fare).

Author, you don’t sound like you’re speaking from personal experience. Unless you’ve personally experienced it, you cannot possibly understand how to solve the problem. I’m only posting here because I think the article was terribly written, by someone who has no idea what they’re talking about.

I too have experience with being below the poverty line. Ultimately it’s about choice. In the neighbourhood I lived in, there were 2 supermarkets within walking distance. With a grocery cart, a woman with 5 kids could make the walk. Many people chose not to. Our downtown core (Calgary) has two grocery stores – Co-op and Safeway.
Poorer people may have less options, but most of those I knew and know make uneconomical choices and they make them often.

Maybe we need to have a Food Network show that shows how to cook when you are below the poverty line.

The Food Network is on cable. I’m guessing that many people who live below the poverty line do not have cable.

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Nancysays:

22 September 2011 at 1:05 pm

You’d be surprised. I know a few people who consider themselves poor and yet have cable.

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shashsays:

22 September 2011 at 2:07 pm

I know people who consider themselves to be poor as well– and they have a car, an apartment, a computer and time. Just because they consider themselves to be poor does not mean that they actually are poor.

My point is that the idea of a show on the Food Network on how to cook if you are below the poverty line, while sounding altruistic, seems to be putting efforts towards a plan that will have little affect. To watch it requires both time and cable (and to implement requires equipment as mentioned below). Not everyone has those items and it is much more likely that those living below the poverty line have none of them.

Most downtown communities will have an Asian store nearby if not a Chinatown. That is where they need to go to for fresh produce and meat as well as staple ingredients at a low cost.

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Catherinesays:

22 September 2011 at 7:44 am

I agree with everything you just said.

This discussion seems a little mixed up. April asks:

“I’m more curious about why cooking at home is given the rep of being more expensive (clearly it’s not) and why cooking healthier food is considered out-of-reach for the working poor. …Is it a matter of time, convenience, know-how, or availability of good ingredients?”

If we want to address this question, we HAVE to define working poor. Fun fact, it was a pretty well accepted definition: those who are employed but live in relative poverty. So when April says “I’m not talking about people so poor that they can’t afford a $7.94 meal”, she’s confused. People who live below the poverty line might not be able to afford a $7.94 meal.

It sounds like she’s really asking about people who live on a tight budget.

She is speaking of the “working poor” in the developed world, and thus even the most impoverished working adult makes at least $12,000 a year($1,000 a month), meaning you should be able to afford $8 a day for food. Especially considering if you have 3 childred as a single parent making $12,000 a year you qualify for all sorts of aid programs like EBT and food stamps. Regardless, if you cannot afford an $8 home cooked meal, there is no way you should be buying a $10 KFC meal. That was sort of the point of the whole article.

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Catherinesays:

22 September 2011 at 1:04 pm

Brenton, I can’t seem to reply to your comment. I totally get that if you can’t afford $8/meal, then you can’t afford $10/meal, and therefore we’re discussing those who CAN afford those options.

My point is just that April frames her final questions/discussion around the working poor, that is those working at least 27 week a year and living below the poverty line ($22,350 yearly income for a family of four). It’s nice that you think “even the most impoverished working adult makes at least $12,000 a year” but it’s just not true.

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Carolsays:

04 December 2011 at 10:57 pm

$7.94 for a meal for a family of our is less than $2.00 per person. That is cheaper than fast food. And if there is any leftovers for a sandwich or lunch for one perosn that will be 5 meals for less than $8.00.

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Megan E.says:

22 September 2011 at 9:39 am

I’d like to address a few things you said.

1. There are usually grocery stores even in “big cities” – AND they are usually close to a bus line.

2. Libraries are open to anyone and they have cookbooks available to check out. Free internet is also usually there and recipes can be looked up.

3. With 5 kids and 5 bags the math is simple, give each kid a bag! (tongue in cheek here, I know usually at least one or two kids can’t carry the bag/have to be carried themselves)

So yes, there are barriers but they aren’t required they are a CHOICE and those who CHOOSE to go to McDonald’s instead of the grocery store shouldn’t be lauded or excused…they can eat healthy AND they can afford it (a bag of dried beans and a 5 lb bag of rice and some veggies <$10 and will feed a family for several days to a week – maybe not as "good" as McD but healthier!). I walked to and from the grocery store as a poor grad. student and I ate very well on less than $20 a week – including indulgences such as lamb and mussels and I could've fed many more people for $30 if I had wanted to – but I lived alone so I could do a little more than a family. It was possible though.

I do think this food disconnect and it's relation to income is an issue but I think the answer is more education in the schools and in the public forums (like library) and less subsidies to companies who encourage poor eating (like Corn and Soy groups). I don't think there is an excuse for anyone to not eat healthy!

I think I agree with the time constraint. If you are working two jobs, cooking a wholesome meal is going to be burdensome. I also want to note that bus lines take TIME. I think it is taken for granted that you can drive to the grocery store in fifteen minutes when your time spent on the bus would be 40. As a city bus rider, it’s the absolute truth. I choose not to drive to places and it takes far longer to get there by bus than car.

I would also like to re-iterate that food deserts do exist. I lived close to an area where the nearest grocery store was three miles away (a long way if you are walking) but the nearest bar and fast food joint were a mere three blocks away. If you’re walking or don’t have time to take the bus to the store, you’re going to be stuck with fast food.

Also: Time & equipment. It takes time to cook. It also takes equipment. Equipment and organization can help make up for time, such as buying/cooking ahead, using a freezer, and so on. And time can make up for lack of equipment or money; for example whole chickens are often cheaper than parts if you have time to cut up a chicken.

If you have a tiny kitchen, not much equipment, no freezer, and inconvenient shopping? Right.

@Nate
I was just going to comment on that same thing. Funny a finance blog screws up on numbers.

I certainly think that it’s a time issue. Time is money. Especially in the US. We’re the most overworked country and when you even have both spouses working 9-5 jobs, time is everything.
If you swing by the KFC on your way home and spend a few bucks more rather than buying each individual ingredient and preparing the meal, you’ll have more time to deal with other family chores and needs.

Eggs are convenient (you can fry them quickly or boil a box and eat them through the week), cheap and healthy.

Lean ground beef is convenient, cheap and healthy.

Tuna in a can is convenient, cheap and healthy– especially the light tuna which has less mercury and is cheaper than albacore.

Cornmeal is convenient if you cook it in advance, and it’s cheap and healthy in moderation.

Rice is convenient especially if you have a rice cooker, and it’s cheap and somewhat healthy– healthier than twinkies.

Same with any kind of beans that you don’t buy canned.

Bananas are convenient, cheap and healthy.

Oranges and grapefruits are convenient, cheap and healthy.

Real peanut butter (no sugar or trans fats) is convenient, cheap and sorta ok healthy (the jury is still out).

Milk is convenient, cheap, and healthy for enough people, though not for the lactose intolerant or insulin resistant.

Frozen veggies are convenient, cheap and healthy, and never wilt.

Pasta is convenient, cheap, and if not consumed in excess, healthy-ish.

Corn tortillas are even more convenient and they keep Mexico alive, but here we deep-fry them and lard them up.

I know because I buy and eat these things. Granted, I have some notion of what to do with those things (e.g. bananas should be peeled, brown rice cooks a low for 45 minutes), but it’s not hard to learn. A monkey can make oatmeal and put a scoop of peanut butter on it.

I’m learning to make bread at the moment. There’s a refrigerator method that requires 5 minutes a day (google that and you’ll find the book). That’s an improvement over the old method.

The biggest factor in my view is that America is culturally handicapped when it comes to food.

Maybe it’s the British heritage, maybe it’s the nuclear family, maybe it’s that everyone works too much, maybe it’s that instead of loving and respecting food as a people we have a minority of obsessive “foodies” just like we have trekkies or furries or groupies. Which is sad and wrong. And I hate the stupid word “foodie”. Cuz good food should be a part of everyday life, not a special weirdo hobby. But maybe they are a vanguard for social change–it’s just the name that’s ugly.

The good news is that as a society we’re more concerned about food quality than ever before. When I came to this country in the early 90s you couldn’t find a decent cup of coffee for thousands of miles. The only wine you could find in supermarkets had the word “cooler” in the label. I used to work in specialty hippie food store and then one day there’s Whole Foods drawing thousands. Organic became big. Now it’s the local thing. Tomorrow it will be something else. The funny thing is that the market eventually responds to demand and now you have WalMart selling their own brand of organic milk. Other things will follow.

Things change, not fast enough sometimes, but they do, and making good eating part and parcel of American culture will take some time, but it will happen.

Ok, that was my little “I have faith in America” speech. Now if I could only get New Mexicans to stop putting melted cheese on everything.

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Tomsays:

22 September 2011 at 5:15 am

Beat me to it!

I also wonder if he took into account the cost of the electricity or gas used to cook, the soap to clean the dishes, and the gas to drive to the store? The real kicker is if he accounted for the time difference between picking up the KFC and buying and cooking his own meal and multiplied that by the value of his own time? I doubt that.

Tom, How about the time you wait in line for the food? or the money you spend on gas or the children asking for extras that you have to spend extra on? These questions can go on and on on both ends. I think the main benefit from cooking at home, is that we teach our children to be self reliant through our actions…

I think people use the excuse time when they really mean “energy”. At the end of a stressful day all they feel like doing is laying around. The ironic thin is the healthier you eat, the more energy you have!!!

Jamie Oliver did this on his last show set in LA. He sent a dad out to get their usual fast food while he and the kids made a homemade meal. Oliver and kids had time to play football in the drive before the dad even got home. Side by side the homemade meal came out on top, too. Can’t remember if he did a cost comparison, but my bet is homemade was cheaper.

April, for an education in why cooking healthy is often beyond the working poor, look up “food deserts.”

Then, of course, there is the time-cost. When you are working two jobs with hungry children, you can either spend an hour cooking, or 5 minutes at the drive through and 55 minutes resting with your kids.

Totally agreed, but that’s not at issue here. Paula Deen’s audience are cooking, not going for take out due to lack of accessible options, and arguably in ways that are more resource-intensive: to use the example given, a deep fryer for the Mac and cheese.

It might take a while to cut and chop your ingredients, but once you set your soup in a crockpot or on the stove, it *cooks*. You stir it every so often and make sure it doesn’t scald, but you can do other things while it’s cooking. I sort the laundry and can put dishes away while my food is cooking.

I’ve been able to cut down my grocery bill by buying more whole foods (re: raw materials, like flour, rice, frozen veggies, etc.). If you want to make Spanish rice, for instance, it’s MUCH cheaper (and probably healthier) to make it from scratch than to just open a box of pre-assembled ingredients and add water.

Ignore me. I’m frustrated that getting off work at 6 or 7pm means little time to cook. It’s a temp gig, when it ends I can go back to cooking every day. Wait…

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Amandasays:

23 September 2011 at 9:16 pm

We always leave the crockpot on and I believe many, many others do as well. I can understand your concern; however, unless you’re in an old home with bad wiring and you are using an ancient crockpot you should probably be OK.

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Sarah B.says:

22 September 2011 at 4:45 am

My husband and I are both graduate students, so we are working on a very slim budget and not a lot of time to cook. We get a vegetable and eggs share from a local co-op that costs us $25/week, and spend about $30 a week at the grocery store, through sales-shopping and couponing. Centering meals around vegetables and grains is a major way to save money and to make meals healthier, and you can make a bunch of healthy meals in a slow cooker where you just have to dump everything in and turn it on! Also, a $8 bottle of olive oil is going to last you a lot longer than a $4 box of butter…

The NYT writer uses the phrase “culinary elitism” like it’s a bad thing. I find that people’s culinary choices reveal a lot about personality, habits and lifestyle, and I’m fine with making judgements on that basis.

It’s quite simple to eat well and be healthy, and it works on any budget: avoid sugar and processed foods. That’s it. It’s a good idea to get off the couch once in a while as well.

The issue I have with the idea of ‘elitism’ is that it (or the connotation at least) is not about the liking a better habit, but about the separation between it provides. Being elitist about something isn’t just thinking you’re way is good, but about reveling in how your choices make you better. An elitist wants to keep the gap there because that’s what distinguishes them.

Much better I say to be an evangelist about something. Someone who thinks their way is good and wants to raise others up with them. It’s the difference between sitting back and making fun of people with a poor education versus trying to help them out and get better.

Nobody likes an evangelist, though. Like my vegan friends trying to impose their idea of “healthy” food on me. I just think, yeah, you keep downing those “healthy” whole grains, soy products and margarine. I’ll stick to my animal fats and veggies. Of course, I’m sure they feel the same way about my food choices. The point being, everyone will have to just come to their own conclusions.

Leaving aside the issue of food deserts – not that I doubt them, they’re just outside my experience – it’s nonsense that a working family can’t cook their own meals. Slow cooking is perhaps the best invention yet created on this earth. Dump a chicken, some canned soup, and frozen veggies into it and six hours later you have a stew, put ground oats, water and a bit of cinnamon overnight and you have breakfast… you can make almost anything without frying. It’s marvellous and never takes more than ten minutes.

When I was a university student (three years ago, not decades) I would buy groceries for myself for the week for $30. Not packaged crap either, fruits, veggies, grains and a couple of meats. Tell me you can feed a person fast-food for less than $30 a week. It’s more than hard to believe.

Eating healthy is usually more expensive than buying packaged, processed food on sale (ramen, anyone?). But I really don’t buy that it’s more expensive than cooking unhealthy food at home.

I did live in a food desert and that’s a whole different issue. When the grocery store is inaccessible, and there is a lack of food education in general, it’s not shocking to see people eating fast food for dinner every night and feeding their kids doritos and red soda for breakfast.

I spend $60/wk feeding my husband and myself. I work full time, he works full time and another part time job, and we share a car, which means long commute times. I feed 2 adults on $8/day, roughly, and we eat a lot of fruits and vegetables. You can’t feed two people three meals a day on fast food for that little.

I usually alot $240/month to groceries, so some weeks it’s more, some less. This lets me stock up on sales. That money also covers toiletries, paper products and cleaning stuff. Breakfast for my husband is always eggs and skillet potatoes. I either eat steel cut oats with an apple (cook a big pot once a week) and a bit of sugar, or Greek yogurt with frozen raspberries and rice krispies. The oats and honey are bought in bulk for cheap. Greek yogurt is made from store bought plain yogurt that is strained. Apples are cheap, but I do sub other fruits in season. Knockoff rice krispies are $3 for a huge bag that lasts months Lunch is always leftovers from the night before, plus fruit, single serve yogurts (2 for $0.89 at the cheap grocery, sometimes less with coupons) and a little bit of nuts, junk food or candy based on what I got with coupons. If I’m desperate we eat peanut butter sandwiches. I cook dinner every night. This weeks meals were as follows.

Chicken pot pie–made two and froze one. 2 chicken breasts, potatoes, carrots, chicken stock, peas, onions, garlic. Baked in a pan with a single top pie crust. I buy Pillsbury pie crusts on sale with coupons, they run me $1.25/crust. Served with steamed broccoli and cauliflower chopped and roasted on a pan with 2 pieces of chopped bacon.

Carnitas on tortillas with cheese, retried beans, salsa and vegetables.

When I serve desert it’s either homemade pudding (I like tapioca) or rootbeer floats.

My best advice is as follows–coupon as reasonable. I coupon for toiletries, cleaning products, paper products, canned tuna, pineapple, peanut butter and any junk food we want. I don’t bother otherwise.

Grocery shop only once a week. Plan the weeks menus before shopping.

Inventory your food before menu planning. Make note of what needs using up and incorporate it into menus.

Buy stuff when it’s a loss leader and freeze to reduce waste. I buy family packs of chicken and immediately take it home and freeze each individually. Pork loin was a loss leader last week and I bought 8 pounds. I took it home and immediately split it up and froze it. When you cook one night’s meal, move the meat for the next night from the freezer to the fridge to thaw.

Keep a repertoire of meals you both like and are easy.

Be willing to shop in multiple places. I Asian produce, broccoli, fish and Asian stuff at the Chinese market, meat, certain vegetables, dairy and eggs at price rite, junk food at CVS, Amazon.com for a few things, and anything else at price chopper. I’m organized so weekly shopping and erranding takes under 3 hours.

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Janesays:

22 September 2011 at 11:35 am

“Dump a chicken, some canned soup, and frozen veggies into it and six hours later you have a stew,”

Laura, I like your black beans and rice recipe. Are you using canned black beans or dried? It would be great if the dried ones would work here without previous cooking. Thanks.

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KABsays:

23 September 2011 at 10:20 am

I make something very similar, except I use a rice cooker for the brown rice, stirfry whatever veggies I have and then add the beans to it. Makes enough for 2 suppers and a lunch. Most weeks, we have 1 supper and a lunch of fish, veggies and rice, 2 suppers and a lunch of chicken, veggies and potatoes, 2 suppers and a lunch of pasta, 2 suppers and a lunch of beans and veggies over rice. The remaining lunches are usually tuna fish with raw veggies and sliced fruit. Oatmeal for breakfast.

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Amandasays:

23 September 2011 at 9:24 pm

Sounds delish. What’s your black bean recipe?!

I cook a big pot of black beans once a month and freeze them in 1/2 cup, 1 cup and 2 cup portions to use in recipes.

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BIGSethsays:

22 September 2011 at 5:03 am

I think the overall problem is we cheated the system for too long and are paying for it now. We’ve spent a long time now getting grains and other foodstuffs as cheap and easy as possible. This freed up more money and time to spend on other things, things we enjoy.

Now it turns out that all of the food we created is making us fat and unhealthy. The obvious answer is to shift back to the healthy ‘real’ food we had in the past (things puchased without a label on it) and even consider cooking it ourselves. Ah, but we don’t want to give the time and money back!

We’ve become used to spending a paltry fraction of our income on food versus everyone else in the world – more money for extra toys, trips, gyms memberships, etc. We’ve also become used to the extra time that not/hardly cooking provides us – tv, video games, running Junior to yet another function versus bonding time cooking with mom, etc.

This is not unlike other financial matters and can be framed as such; putting off car maintnance, building up credit cards, paying for a maid.

Myself? I still eat out more than I shoudld. I get fast food maybe twice a year. And when I shop to cook I try to stay in the outer rim of the market where fruits, vegetables, dairy and meats can be found.

And, unlike just about everything else in my life, I’m actively trying to spend more on food

Life has gotten so much more complicated than it is – with our “needs” list growing –> cell phone, cable, TVs, ipads, ipod (and everything starting with the i). We can’t have everything and there has to be choice to prioritize healthy food.

I find these conversations about food and health so frustrating. People always bring up cost as a reason people choose fast food, but let’s face it, there are a lot of obese, or even just overweight, people who aren’t poor and could eat healthier but don’t. I think that is who Bourdain was thinking of when he made his comment. (Bourdain has been all over the world and met many poor people who eat healthier than the average Paul Dean fan.) I don’t think we can address the obesity crisis until we figure out what’s really going on.

Exactly. 1/3rd of the population of the USA are obese! Are you really all that poor or is it a case of not wanting to spend time making food instead of slouching about in front of the TV?

You don’t need to eat organic to eat healthily. My family buy organic food as a lifestyle choice because we don’t agree with poisoning our countryside with pesticides and herbicides, but if you choose to buy normal vegetables you’ll still be doing yourself a world of good.

As a student, last term my food budget was £20 (~$30) a week. I live in Central London and if I wanted to go to the proper supermarket, it’s a 2 mile walk from my flat (can’t afford bus at £1.30 each way). My other option was hitting the minimart costcutter style stores (expensive!) or going to Iceland which only really sells frozen food. I needed a fair amount of calories this last term as I was training for a cheerleading competition and working some very long days in the studio. If I eat fast food I don’t feel at my best, so I need to eat well.

Frozen vegetables are extremely affordable- (http://www.iceland.co.uk/our-food/frozen-food/vegetables) and very versatile. You can use them in soups, stews, cook them with noodles, have them boiled or steamed as a side dish or stirfry them quickly and healthily. They don’t go bad in the fridge like fresh ones.

The myth that healthy food is difficult and expensive is cultivated by corporations who want you to spend your money on gross processed products and then spend even more money at a gym trying to burn it off (or at a store buying plus sized clothes).

I’m in the Pennsylvania Appalachians. Many are poor. There aren’t any fast food restaurants unless you want to drive a half hour, and who has time?

People cook at home, but many are obese even without fast food. Because food here is more than the ingredients: it’s comfort, it’s tradition, it’s the culture. This is a hardscrabble farm community (mostly we grow rocks) and calorie-dense food kept everyone going.

I told my doctor once that food was the local Prozac. Even now, the food we grew up with makes us happy. It just makes us fatter too.

I agree that there is a distinction here. From personal experience, buying healthy food to cook at home is more expensive in my area than buying mac and cheese for a week. The nutrient profile is different. Carbs are cheap. Protein can be (beans) but can also be expensive (salmon is 8$/lb at my grocery store). Fixing your nutrient balance can be more expensive if you are avoiding or reducing your consumption of carbs and don’t want to eat beans all day. (I usually have beans at least once a day.)

Food deserts is a good issue to bring up. Maybe it should be covered in the next post on food.

As for the rest, maybe you should look up “straw man argument.”
If you’re working two jobs, you’re obviously not going to cook fried chicken or anything else that takes an hour. Fry a pork chop, microwave some frozen vegetables, put it on a plate. Ten minutes. Involve your kids so it goes faster and they learn something. A meal that takes longer, like pasta or baked chicken, is mostly waiting for water to boil or for the oven to be done, not time spent actively on your feet.
If your children turn up their noses at this because the fast food tastes better, tell them they’re obviously not actually hungry. That’s what my parents taught me.

Anyway as far as the larger point of the post goes, your objections are equally valid towards Paula Deen. I would never use one of her recipes to save time or money and you couldn’t get all the ingredients at a bodega.

Whoever is interested in learning more about food deserts, I recommend this video “Bodega Down Bronx”: http://places.designobserver.com/feature/bodega-down-bronx/12257/ (scroll down the page a bit) It’s a fun, 30-minute video made by and about teenagers living in the South Bronx, a food desert with high obesity and asthma rates.

I disagree about it being a straw man. I’m speaking from having worked a job where I was working 10-14 hr shifts, 7 days a week, for two months. That absolute level of exhaustion, without even adding kids into the mix! During those time, even that little bit of “fry chicken, microwave veggies” was utterly beyond me. I ate like crap for those 2 months because anything beyond “someone else make it” was impossible.

The time it takes to cook could be looked at differently. I’ve seen some ookbooks differentiate between active prep time and time to the table. It only takes 5 minutes to plop a chicken in an iron skillet, surround it with cut up (you don’t even have to peel them) potatoes and sliced carrots.
While the chicken is cooking you can multitask, set the table, pick up the apartment, help the kids with homework, do the laundry. Whole chicken leftovers can be used to make the next days meal. If your starved eat a yogurt while your waiting for your chicken to cook.

It all depends on how far you want to take it. For instance I needed some ground beef last night. I could buy the regular stuff for $2.99 a pound, or buy the hormone/antibiotic free stuff for 6.49. I went with the more expensive because I can afford it and that is what I prefer to feed my kids. However, that is different than saying that I am going to fry up some chicken and serve only starches with it versus grilling a couple chicken breasts and making a salad.

I personally eat out only when I have no time to cook. I prefer to cook because I use the leftovers for lunch for my kids and I too. It has nothing to do with cost, just time.

You can always make cheaper alternatives for whichever option you choose. If I want to be a proponent for saying fast food is cheaper, I will point to Taco Bell and say I can eat dinner for 3 bucks. Will I feel full a long time and feel great? No, but I will have eaten cheaply. Or, I could say I made grilled cheese and a can of soup at home and compare that to eating out. People will justify their decisions period, and always find data that supports their view.

When I was a single Mom less than ten years ago, I routinely met a challenge to provide healthy, nutritious dinners for myself and two kids for under $5 total. These would generally include meat or meat-based casserole, salad and vegetable. We’d usually have something sweet like a brownie for dessert as well. It seems to me that even with inflation this could be done for $7.50 nowadays. When the kids were involved with after-school sports and activities, we resorted to fast food and I was glad when the season ended so I could deal with the associated weight gain.

I just heard on NPR that the obesity “epidemic” is attributable in part to the fact that lots of us have quit smoking by comparison with previous generations. I know when I quit I packed on 20 lbs seemingly overnight. I’d prefer to carry the weight than to smoke it off, but most of my thin relatives still smoke.

Interesting topic. I would like to point out that the KFC example is flawed as the point of your article was to say whether HEALTHY food could be made on a budget.

Also Bourdain might want to revise his statement a bit considering Deen is on cable which often costs $100/month in many areas. If these viewers can afford cable, my guess is they are not poor.

All that aside, I can feed my family of four healthy, homemade meals for a couple bucks per person. And yes, sometimes it takes 15 or 20 minutes of prep time and time in the oven. Right now I am teaching my boys how to cook – great family time and a lasting life skill for them.

Bourdain’s original comment never mentioned money. He merely called her out on cooking unhealthy meals, and her defense was that it’s all that some people can afford. It’s not Anthony’s fault money was brought into this.

RIDICULOUS!!! Then families are bombarded by ads for fast food or junk food. No wonder they don’t eat healthy. =) Paula’s fatty recipes (I’ve never actually seen one) are probably better than most fast food.

Here in USA people on welfare & I know alot of them & no I’m not on any govt. program, but they all have either cable, satellite or direct Tv & high speed internet & expensive cell phones. A family of 5 usually gets around $750 -$800 a month in food stamps.

I think it is mostly a matter of convenience. When you feel stretched and lack for time, fast food and eating out occur more often. I think it is also a matter of self control. No, I’d really rather not make dinner every night and pack lunches for my kids and do all the grocery shopping that goes with it, but I discipline myself and do it because it is the best for them and ultimately the least expensive. I think we really lack self control as a nation.

I also wonder if we as a society haven’t forgotten how to make a healthy meal out of simple ingredients. As we’ve created fast food, packaged food, etc., have we lost that?

My mom only cooked out of necessity because she didn’t want to feed her child fast food, she quit cooking when I left for college. Everything I know about cooking has come from PBS chefs, food magazines, etc. because I have a genuine interest in food, but not everyone has time/desire to do that.

Absolutely agree with you April. My mother in law NEVER cooks from scratch. Every single thing in her home is prepackaged and processed. On the other hand, I am a stay at home mom who cooks everything I can from scratch. After making bread for the past year it only takes about 15 minutes to whip up 2 loaves (rising times not included). Not everything I make is “healthy” but I know it is still ten times better than any type of fast food. Practice does make perfect when it comes to cooking.

I just got into baking my own bread, and you’re right, the time it takes to actually make the bread (assembling and mixing ingredients, kneading, etc.) is about 15 minutes. While the bread rises, I can work on other projects. It’s no big deal now that I’ve got it down to a science.

My mom is the same way as your MIL – everything is processed and is “semi-homemade.” She tells me that it saves her time, and I always say that it doesn’t really take that much more time to measure out your own ingredients to make it from scratch.

I think there is a perception that you can be seen as ‘well-off’ (maybe not the right word….) if you have the money to buy semi-homemade stuff. In the 80s, remember, semi-homemade food was perceived as a timesaver and a way for working moms to provide their families with a delicious (I’m using the term loosely) meal at home while having a career.

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G. M. N.says:

22 September 2011 at 10:09 am

I didn’t read all the comments yet, but a tip to check into for working mothers and bread making. My mother-in-law gave me a recipe for refrigerated donuts. Mix it up before going to work, put in the fridge, and fix just before or after supper. She said all yeast will cause breads, etc. to rise no matter where it is put. We just put it near heat to make it rise faster.

It took me 10-15 minutes before heading out to work and about 20 minutes after supper – punching down, cutting out, frying and putting a coating on them. Not superbly healthy, but a quick and easy snack to do once in awhile. I haven’t tried it on bread yet. Must do it soon. I miss the smell of a home with freshly baked bread.

Yes! This! I saw a Jaime Oliver bit all about the break down of cooking and nutrition knowledge over the generations. Basically a segment of America doesn’t know what else to do besides boxes in the freezer or greasy bags. They don’t have knowledge and recipes to pass along to their kids. This perpetuates the consumption of crap and the obesity epidemic.

The level we’ve taken processed food to is amazing. I marvel at my co-workers and their individual bags of sugary artificially flavored oatmeal. Oatmeal! Something so healthy, that we can ruin for the sake of a little convenience.

I know! I’m perfectly capable of ruining my own oatmeal be drowning it in cinnamon and suger until it cries all by myself, thank you very much!

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Mimmssays:

22 September 2011 at 7:09 am

I get so frustrated reading the comments on this topic: so many assumptions coming from people who seem to be saying that because they’ve had a particular experience, that’s just the way it is and anyone who doesn’t get it is just lazy, stupid, or “addicted to convenience”.

I know that my family in the 70s and 80s seldom cooked anything that didn’t come from a box, bag, or can. As an adult learning to cook, I can tell you that it’s intimidating, that making a mistake is expensive, and that preparing meals isn’t just about cooking. It’s not just about time, either. From my perspective, I have to put a lot more into it than it deserves. I’m learning, but it’s a lot of work, and time, and energy.

There’s planning, which can take a lot of time when you don’t know what you’re doing. There’s grocery shopping, which is a special form of hell for me. There’s getting used to new flavors and textures-I don’t like fruits and veggies particularly – I didn’t have them as a child when I was forming opinions about food. There’s figuring out portions and packaging options for leftovers, because that can make the difference between getting eaten or wasted.

But once you get past that learning curve – and it shouldn’t take most adults terribly long to figure out – it’s fairly smooth sailing. Right?

It used to take me a while to make bread, as I was teaching myself how to do it. But after doing it a few times, I know what to do at each step, and I have the hang of it. If people give up on cooking after one failure, then that really is too bad.

I hear you on the cost of screw-ups with food. (DH once forgot to take the plastic lining off a big, expensive cut of meat that we were supposed to have for dinner one night as a treat.) But I have also learned how to “fix” mistakes. (Except for the plastic meat. We threw that one out.) If something is bland, just add some spices. Keep your eye on the food so it doesn’t overcook.

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Vanessasays:

22 September 2011 at 9:27 am

“There’s grocery shopping, which is a special form of hell for me.”

I hate most types of shopping, but shopping for groceries is the worst. I can never avoid the crowds no matter what time I go. And I completely suck at picking out produce. I never know when I’m getting a good bargain. Is $2/bunch for broccoli a good buy? It does really matter, since it’s only going to rot in my crisper drawer because I don’t know what to do with it. The whole process is overwhelming to me, and sometimes I pick up a few convenience items just so I can get the heck out of the store.

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Beckysays:

22 September 2011 at 11:33 am

Mimms, good for you for taking on the project of learning how to cook and shop! People who learned this growing up have no idea how many different skills “home cooking” involves or how hard they are to learn when you don’t have a teacher.

I believe you’re right, that there has been a cultural breakdown in the U.S., where people have not been learning these skills. There are as many reasons for this as there are families. Placing blame does no-one any good; as a society we need to support one another in fixing the situation instead of pointing fingers and calling names. Once people don’t have an alternative to commercially prepared foods, they’re a sitting duck for restaurants and processed-food companies selling unhealthy and expensive food, because they truly feel they don’t have a choice.

As your example shows, they do have a choice, but the startup cost of making that choice can be high. It WILL pay off in the long run, though. I promise!

YES! I remember starting professional school on a ridiculously tight budget, and with minimal cooking skills and very basic equipment. How intimidating to take on learning to cook on top of all my other responsibilities! But I knew I was capable of learning, I came from a family who cooked and preserved (why did I not learn? That’s another story) and the only person turning up her nose at my failures was me. And I had a car — no groceries in walking distance or on a <2h bus route, period. To save gas money I ran a grocery car pool for fellow students.

Now imagine I have two jobs, kids, no family support, no car, and come from a background where learning was not valued. I have no idea whether I'd've been able to beat those odds.

Having said that — for those of us who can make time, energy, and brain space, healthy can be done just as cheaply and quickly as unhealthy. The reasons people with the resources to do better eat unhealthily have nothing to do with money. Though we in North America are very good at denial.

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babystepssays:

22 September 2011 at 8:27 am

Yes!
I am convinced that if you cook food from scratch from actual ingredients (nothing processed, or only basically processed eg salt is “processed”), it would be hard to get too obese.

Time *is* an issue for many, but cooking from scratch is not impossible (crockpot & cooking in large batches/freezing portions can help).

Also I remember an earlier GRS post where someone astutely noted that folks on public assistance get their money 1x/mo, so tend to buy a whole month of food at a time – and processed food is shelf-stable. Again, cooking in batches & freezing could make fresh food viable even 1x/mo, but then there are food deserts.

On food deserts, great progress being made on food deserts in part via farmers markets that accept public food aid added in inner-cities, but still a ways to go.

FYI, if you live in a low-cost area with agriculture, local food may cost *less* than grocery store food (but this is hard to replicate in an urban area, Detroit may be an exception with “urban homesteading”).

Our farmer’s market takes food stamps. There are also WIC checks to use there, too, if you’re poor.

Just because you get food stamps once a month does not mean you shop once a month. Unless you want to. You can shop weekly, and walk to the grocery for exercise. Ask a neighbor to watch your kids. The worst thing for a food budget it to take kids to the store with you.

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Carlasays:

22 September 2011 at 11:50 am

I totally agree with you, April. I learned how to cook when I was 10 and until I started living on my own, I cooked meals for the household 3 nights a week and baked for ever social function there was. I still have the same cookware, books and utensils I purchased years ago.

My hobby is not only to save money on food, but to eat healthy, nourishing palatable, food – more than just throwing food in a crock pot and praying that its eatable at the end of the day.

I know not everyone has the skill or desire for this and I think that’s *one* reason why a lot of people eat so poorly. If you have the skill and desire, you can make anything taste like it was made in a 4 star restaurant with just a few key ingredients.

April, I learnt to cook as a young adolescent (around 12-13), because as soon as I went to secondary school, both parents went back into full time work. My mum has always worked, but her being full time and both my parents having a slew of “extra-curricular activities”, meant that I was alone for long stretches of time. I didn’t really get that much instruction from my mum past “oh, hey, that chicken needs using up tonight”, so I learnt through trial, improvement, and internet recipes (on dial up). When I turned 18 and moved in with an ill boyfriend, I had to put everything in to practice looking after the both of us.

My brother used to just go and hang at friends’ houses for the free food, or go eat junk, so he doesn’t know how to cook at all.

People can teach themselves to cook, just like they can teach themselves a language, or a craft skill.

I do think self-control is an issue, but your first point is even more important. I think we as a nation tend to be overworked and underpaid. After a long day of working or in my case watching the kids, sometimes I just cannot conceive of cooking a meal, even a simple one. I also find that if I cleaned my kitchen during the day, I will often at 5 p.m. look at it and declare, “I just cannot clean this kitchen one more time today! Let’s go out.” This comes from a place of pure exhaustion. And I imagine many Americans, poor or not, are in the same place.

We just tend to judge more harshly those who can only afford to eat out at a fast food restaurant for their convenience food. Do you (and here I mean GRS readers) feel the same way about a middle class New Yorker who gets take out sushi on his or her way home from work? Sure, such a decision doesn’t affect the waistline as much as the pocketbook, but the urge to get upscale takeout comes from the same emotions of exhaustion and the desire for convenience. It just happens that in our case with kids we gravitate towards cheaper options that tend to be less healthy.

I know what you mean, Jane. Baseball season does me in just about every year. I was finding that I was taking the kids to McD’s because I just didn’t have the time or inclination to feed them, but I stopped the fast food about 5 years ago because I felt it was too unhealthy and expensive for us.

I began substituting very easy meals that don’t mess up the kitchen – like frozen pizza – or if I’m really beat I’ll tell the kids they need to have protein bars or peanut butter crackers. We’ll even bring them in the car (along with water bottles) so they can eat on the way to practice if they have to. Not ideal, but definitely better and cheaper than a Quarter Pounder w/cheese.

My other trick, which I’m sure you know, is to have leftovers on hand that the kids can microwave. Tacos, pot pies, and quiches make quick, tasty, reheatable meals that we eat throughout baseball season.

@Jane….I feel your pain at not wanting to cook a meal, I do. When my kids were toddlers and my husband was deployed for over a year, I was really grateful my kids liked beans (canned) and rice. I ate very little because after a full day, the last thing I wanted to do was cook for myself and mess up the kitchen again. I looked skeletal. Trips to McDonald’s wouldn’t have been all that bad for me, but sometimes I was too tired to even conceive getting the kids in the car and driving 20 minutes to the nearest fast food. The only meals I ate, really, were the ones my friends made me.

There are many cultures where the meal in the middle of the day is the main meal. Makes sense really. If you are home with the kids….why not have the main meal in the middle of the day…then at night it is a sandwich.

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Mistysays:

22 September 2011 at 5:44 am

As an avid couponer, I can tell you processed foods are definitely cheaper (and many times free). When I started to coupon, I was able to get tons of “unhealthy” foods for cheap. Every time nabisco comes out with a new coupon, there are sales and coupons… cheap cookies. New hormel processed lunch…sales and coupons…. leads to cheap meal on the go. After a year of bad eating and 10 extra pound, I decided this was not healthy for my family. Now I only buy healthy foods with minimal processing. I could go to my local store and get free white bread this week. Instead, I am paying $1 extra to pick up 100% whole grain bread. I do make most meals from scratch, but that is because I have time as I am not a stay at home mom.

I think cooking your own food saves so much money compared to eating out. Sure, an hour might be “wasted” when cooking our own food, but that hour probably would have been used to watch TV anyways .

Cooking healthy rarely has an extra price tag. We can choose to either make a grilled chicken salad or fried chicken with french fries on the side. The choice is ours, and with so many recipes on the internet it is easy to find a healthy-low cost meal daily.

I read that article, and was astounded by the charge of “elitism” towards Bourdain. Of all people to call an elitist, the man who eats street food and in the homes of his guides is not the one I would pick.

I fully comprehend and accept the idea of food deserts, but I’m not sure I fully buy into the overall lack of affordable food at regular stores. I think it’s more a matter of people either not knowing how to cook or not caring enough about healthy food to cook. I grew up in a household with zero extra money, and we NEVER ate processed food. Lots of rice and beans, but we couldn’t afford fancy processed cereals or frozen pizzas. A pound of dried beans will feed you for a lot longer than a crappy pizza.

In addition, my family has been on a very tight budget for several years since my husband and I got married. While I admittedly had access to an Asian/Latino grocery most of the time, I could fill up my grocery cart all the way to the top with rice, beans, and various random fruits and veggies (whatever was on sale) for less than $30. That fed a family of four for well over a week in tight times. Add some cheap ground beef or chicken parts (which I don’t normally advocate for, since they’re from CAFOs), and you can still come in for less than a few $10 dinners at KFC.

I truly sympathize with people who don’t have access to regular grocery stores, and that is a REAL issue, but don’t feel much for people who have access to a store with rice and beans available and who whine about not having healthy food when they won’t spend a few minutes cooking.

Funny thing, pizza is. originally, poor people’s food. And it’s really cheap, especially if you make it yourself. Flour, yeast, bit of oil, a little tomato, a sprinkle of cheese? Not pricey at all! It only burns a hole in your pocket when you get delivery from some mass-produced inferno. Which is why pizza is such big business: it’s very cheap to make. Anyway, try it at home- it can make for a fun evening with a glass of boxed wine ($10 for 3 liters–that’s 4 bottles– at Trader Joes).

Oh, totally. Before I found out I’m severely gluten-intolerant, we had pizza at least once a week. Flour? Less than $.50/large pizza. Tomato sauce? $.25/pizza. We were limited on cheese, so made do with a pizza with less cheeze. Probably $.50 for the pizza. Add canned olives or something for less than a buck. That’s pretty darn cheap if you make it yourself. (And healthier than Dominos.)

I think its hilarious that Paula Deen jumps straight to Prime Rib and expensive Wine as examples of healthy food that the poor can’t afford. First of all I wouldn’t consider either of those options “healthy”. Secondly there’s a whole lot of middle ground price-wise between throwing the cheapest ingredients you can find into a fryer and eating $50 prime rib (besides who actually is cooking prime rib for dinner for themselves on a regular basis?).

I know, and how is deep-frying a cheap way to cook? I make occasional forays into home-fried foods (Indian vegetarian specialties – koftas and pakoras, yum) and the cost of using all that oil more than offsets the fact that the other ingredients are inexpensive (bean flour, spices, and vegetables like cabbage and radishes).

In the “good old days” (which were not that great, by the way) a meal like fried chicken was a once-a-week treat, at best. Not cheap working people’s food at all. Cheap food was organ meats, pig’s feet, and whatever you grew in your garden. Now those items are considered fancy, “elitist” specialty foods.

I always felt that as a nation, we reached a low point in taste and nutrition back in the 80′s when ketchup as classified as a vegetable offering in school lunch. I was fan of boxed mac and cheese and the drive through through my late teens and beyond back then. It was the taste I loved and price and availability that brought me back for more. Hard habits to break even though I now know better.
It is taking a concerted effort across the nation to make fresh and whole foods more readily available: vouchers for seniors at farmer’s markets, fresh local produce in children’s school lunches, gardening adult ed classes and more. I’m impressed when I hear about it. I have many options where I live and still struggle to consistently make better, healthy choices. I’m part of the national learning curve: learning how to eat real foods again, looking for cheaper alternatives, and discovering how to prep and prepare it so it tastes good.
There is nothing wrong with the occasional convenience of a fast food meal, butter rich Sunday dinner with Ms. Dean, but I think Mr. Bourdain has the right idea that simple food, well prepared does not have to be a luxury.

Because personal attacks are so fun?
You can call her recipes disgusting, you don’t have to like a recipe.
But calling her vile? Why the name calling? What did she do to you? She certainly didn’t go around making personal attacks on people like that Boudain guy did. Or like you just did. :/

For what it’s worth. It’s almost always cheaper to cook at home than it is to eat out at restaurants or fast food joints (and this discounts the fact that your long term health is the best investment you can make). Paleo is often considered an “elitist”, “too expensive” diet, but check out this recent food expenses post from Robb Wolf.

No this doesn’t take into account the cost of electricity or time to make, but frankly that’s one of the dumbest arguments I’ve ever heard of. It reminds me of the comedian who picked on the people that need microwave directions for pop-tarts: if you’re in such a time crunch that 1 minute in the toaster vs. 3 seconds in the microwave is important for you then you’re priorities are all effed up (obviously not a direct quote).

Yes! I saw Wolf’s article the other day. While my family is thankfully in a situation where we can afford local meat now, we still sometimes have to prioritize on the organic v. conventional thing depending on our monthly budget and/or what curveballs we’ve been thrown. I LOVED that article, partly because that’s how we eat and shop, and partly because it’s hard to argue cost when you see receipts and the actual groceries.

HUGE fan of Rob Wolf and Mark Sisson, and have read both their books.
Whole Foods CAN be expensive – depending on what you buy. However, if you work the sales there, like its a good idea to do at other groceries stores, you can get some good stuff at a reasonable price. I only shop there for certain items, like bison/buffalo meat, and a few other things I cannot find at a Walmart, Costco or Kroger’s on a regular basis.
Regarding paleo/primal eating – sure it CAN be expensive…if you make it. We have 6 in our house right now, and I find when I make a meal that could be consider paleo/primal, it usually is not any more expensive, and sometimes cheaper than some other meals.
Not to hijack the theme here – but Wolf and Sisson are good guides to eating healthfully without going bankrupt because their attitude is basically just do the best you can afford. We are not 100% paleo at all, but when we can stick to around 60 to 70% it has made a good difference in how most of the family feels, and the budget. Because we end up doing more cooking and less drive through, restaurants, or just cooking hot pockets or the like.

Ok I admit, I nuke my poptarts (when the occasion comes up that I have them). But I swear it’s because they’re better like that. Sure toasting gets you that nice crispiness, but there’s nothing like 10 seconds in the microwave to get that jam to a delicious molten consistency.

Thanks for the link to that article. I do think a big part of some problems is what I like to call ‘food fussiness’. As a new parent I am AMAZED at the ‘food’ that is marketed towards children (and their parents). I think that the move to formula (this is where the expensive processed food starts fellas) and then continual food marked at childrent that
a)all tastes the same
b)is relatively sweet and starchy
c)lasts forever in the cupboard
Is resulting in a nation that expects their food to always taste the same. Because most people’s ‘favorite’ foods are available year round they miss the connect between the seasons. That a cooling outdoors means more squash instead of peppers. When I was a child we were on public assistence because my mother was home to raise us instead of working(yes, that was value decision that they made not me). We ate whatever vegetable was on sale that week (VERY SEASONALLY), as a result there isn’t a food that I dislike. Her motto was – if you don’t want to eat it – you must not be that hungry. Not to say I don’t struggle with food today – but when I go back to her minimalist food choices, we eat better and healthier. Now that I am a parent I do buy some of the convenience food for snacks, but I try to make sure my daughter gets a VARIETY of food now, so she’ll be better prepared to navigate her future food needs.
Back to April’s question – barring extreme couponing I do think it is cheaper to eat heathily, but just like anything it takes an inital up front investment that pays dividends and our ‘give it to me now’ social structure is generally not tolerant of ‘sucking it up for a while’ to improve.
Finally – and I should have started with this one cause it’s a biggy – the women’s movement was great for a lot of things but the single WORST thing it did was demean the value of what women did in the home. It lowered the worth of having a clean home and a well cooked meal – cause these things do take time and effort to learn and I find that a lot of my female (and male) friends feel it is ‘beneath’ them to learn to cook and to spend time in the kitchen. Really it’s beneath you to insure that you’re kids don’t end up dying at an earlier age than you because of diabetes or heart failure?
(off the soapbox now)

I think it’s primarily that really quite basic cooking know-how is being increasingly lost ever since the 50′s when convenience food companies started putting out recipes calling for their convenience foods. Now it sounds like there’s often endorsements to include them in recipes. So we don’t know anymore how to make a simple white sauce or gravy off the top of our heads, instead we open up a can of Cream of Mushroom soup or a can of gravy. And when that seems like it’s too much effort we go thru drive-thru.

But here’s also where a big part of the general food problem is – on Paula Deen’s site – front page of the recipes today – is a recipe to make “The Deen Bros. Lighter Gooey Chocolate Butter Cake Ice Cream.”
Here’s the blurb with it:
“Want a sweet treat to help say your final goodbye’s to summer? Bobby and Jamie lightened up this ice cream recipe so now you can have two scoops!”

Two scoops. Of a 229 calorie/serving dessert.

I also checked the recipes for after school snacks. And wow, just wow. Does anyone really make bacon wrapped breadsticks for after-school snack? Or chocolate covered pretzels? Whatever happened to a piece of toast or cheese and an apple or banana? Can’t get any faster than that.

Julia Child (who lived to the age of 92) said it best:
“small helpings, no seconds, no snacking, and a little bit of everything.”

I haven’t always been a knowledgeable cook but came to it out of necessity. I was on a tight budget but didn’t like the taste of processed foods even though my kids did. So I went back to the basics of how people used to cook – but using time saving techniques available today. It’s paid off big time in grocery costs over the years.

April, if you enjoy My Life in France, I’d like to recommend Simone Beck’s Food and Friends as a follow-up book. She was Child’s cooking partner, and the perspective she adds through her book is just as interesting!

Another one added to my list! Oh man, thanks you guys. I adore Paul Child–why don’t we hear more about him? He was such an interesting person and Julia credits him with everything she was able to achieve. They really were quite a team.

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elorriesays:

22 September 2011 at 8:38 am

Oh! Your comment just reminded me of an episode of Paula Deen’s show. She was making Symphony Brownies which involve layering Hershey’s Symphony candy bars between your brownie mix so you get this chocolaty-gooey center. She then decides to make whipped cream and add crunched up bits of the candy bar to it. While she’s serving up the brownies and whipped cream she says “And if you’re on a diet you can just leave the whipped cream off” Haha, yeah like that’s going to make a difference at this point….

It strikes me that Paula Deen is cooking for a cultural mindset more than an actual mathematical calculation of “poor”.

Paula Deen herself is not poor by any stretch of the imagination (cookbooks, TV show, appearances, etc.) but she clearly identifies herself with so-called “regular families” and in opposition to the “58$ prime ribs”. It acts as a badge of cultural pride- we’re not THOSE folks – even if her (and those she cooks for) paycheques don’t match up with the stereotype.

This goes to the heart of the cultural stereotypes we carry around even within our own societies. To be rich is to be wasteful, self-indulgent, and entitled; to be poor is a badge of honour, makes you more authentic, more in touch with the people, more noble.

We often do the same thing here in GRS when we talk about international travel. To stay in a 5-star hotel is to be isolated and out of touch; to stay in a hostel or in a homestay is to be immersed with the REAL Country X, and to be a richer (pun intended), more authentic travel experience– even if our fellow travellers are comparatively wealthy folks just like us.

I know I am not answering the question here but I dont know why we have to compare cooking shows-EVERY one of them is different and focuses on different things. It bugs me that people have to make judgments about someone else’s EXTREMELY popular cooking show. People can make their own decisions about what they want to cook for thier families. It certainly isnt Paul Deen’s fault or anyone else’s that people decide to cook with butter. If you dont want to cook like Paula Deen then don’t cook like Paula Deen and watch someone else’s show. Where does someone who doesnt even HAVE a cooking show get off criticizing someone else who does? This whole discussion can take place WITHOUT bashing cooking shows.

Paula Deen is actively encouraging and teaching people to eat food that will kill them. This isn’t hyperbole; it’s reality. Obesity kills people and eating a Paula Deen-based diet WILL make a person obese. Any person. She also has a huge audience. Of course she’s not causing the obesity epidemic, but it seems to me that she was appropriately called out because she’s refusing to admit that she has any social responsibility – something that our culture as a whole seems loath to require of anyone lately, for some reason. Her “but this is for working people” comeback is a cop-out that just doesn’t hold water; I see it as a red herring intended to distract us from the point Bourdain was making.

This “healthy food is more expensive” trope is one of my pet peeves. The real problem is not that healthy food is more expensive, it is that people no longer have the skills to shop and cook properly. As I sit and type this, I have a chicken carcass simmering on the stove for stock that will become soup. For the $9.45 I paid for an organic chicken, we have had two meals (roast chicken one night, leftovers in chicken pot pie another night) and I’m well on my way to making a third meal from the same fundamental ingredients. It takes a knowledge base to do this, and for a variety of reasons, people just don’t do so anymore.

Paula Deen is playing to her audience, which is a group that was raised on high-fat, high-calorie foods–which was perfectly fine when our jobs as a society were physically taxing agricultural jobs. However, we are now in front of computers all day, and Bourdain is spot-on in his analysis.

Food deserts are a real problem. But there are even ways around this, if one shops and stock a pantry correctly.

I think there is a lack of knowledge and motivation as well as a convience factor. I understand about the food desert but with the ability to plan I think much of that can be overcome. I think between the antics of marketers and entitlement and live-for-today attitudes it is a “tough nut to crack”.

Freezer! Freezer! Freezer! I spend two weekends a year cooking then package everything in single servings. I can come home and have chicken tacos, soup, casseroles, roast and mashed potatoes or a variety of other dishes hot and on the table, usually in less than fifteen minutes. I’m not a big salad eater but sometimes I want one, then I usually hit a fast food place and get a $0.99 side salad. That way I get carrots, tomatoes and cucumbers on the salad, all things that would go bad before I was interested in eating them again.

Beans also freeze well so I make up a crock pot of beans eat what I want for a few days and freeze the rest in one cup servings.

Yes, I know not everyone has the space or interest for a freezer but there are some things that can be done to maximize the space you do have. I freeze my bags flat then stick them on end in a small dollar store crate. When it’s time to eat it becomes a matter of rifling through like a file drawer to find what’s for supper tonight.

Oh, I love this topic! First of all, I have the opportunity to say publicly:

***Paula Deen is disgusting and her recipes are vile ***

Seriously, her crap is truly repugnant. Way too much sugar on everything. Everything gets larded up and fried. Once on TV I even saw her put mayonnaise on a pizza, like it was the greatest thing. It made me wanna puke. I mostly encounter her when searching recipes on the internet, and her stuff always has triple then sugar than everyone else’s.

Paula Deen is disgusting, and her recipes are vile. Oh, it feels great to say that in a public forum. I often just rant about it at home with my wife for audience. Thank you for the chance to vent publicly.

The question of organic is another story. Organic food is for the birds. Damn the yuppie prices. I try, I really try, but unless it’s offered by Costco or the bulk section of my CoOp I can no longer afford it. The way I originally got into heavy debt was at Whole Foods, by the way (it’s a long story). I miss those shopping carts, but not the price tag.

I do, a little, yes. I never claimed to be a saint or a paragon of virtue. We all have our vices.

Okay, in spite of my deep moral flaws I’m not being gratuitous though.
I explained *why* I find her disgusting in a long post in reply to your previous comment, but the thing is not appearing. Looks like tha abundance of internet proof I was providing got filtered for spam. Sorry.

A little patience and maybe it will all be clear.

And please realize: I’ve been ranting about her for years in the privacy of my home. Every time I search a recipe online her garbage comes up. GRS providing a one-day soapbox for this particular passion of mine is a lifetime opportunity. How could I let it go by? Carpe diem and what not.

If one is used to the even quality of prepared/processed/convenience-foods one will expect that same even quality when cooking themselves, and if in a hurry or just unexperienced it will be hard to acheeve.
That most essential of spices known as monosodium glutamate or more lovingly MSG is so hard to let go of. Since no recipes for real food contain it, how on earth can they be any good?

If you are unsure how to eat healthily, give up buying anything that has a list of ingredients on it. Only buy uncooked separate ingredients (fresh frozen or even canned, as long as there is only one ingredient in the can). unsure what to do with the ingredients? it is mostly safe to apply some heat, for the beginner i suggest trying to make soup, since it is difficult to burn.

I agree that it’s really easy to make stuff with canned and whole ingredients.

That said, I wouldn’t say soup was the place to start! I still have barely ventured into soup, but I think stir fry is REALLY easy and then just add some pasta or rice to it for a one bowl healthy meal…

The beauty of soup (and stir-fry!) is that one doesn’t really need a recipe to cook. You clean out your pantry/fridge and throw things in a pot. Add broth for the soup (although you can get by with water and lots of seasoning), and let it simmer. Rice, pasta, and potatoes make the soup more of a filler for a meal.

What seasoning do you use? I think I’d be more inclined to cook at home and all if I knew how to season things. I STINK AT IT!!! I cannot, for the life of me make my own broth. It’s always tasteless. Right now I’m in love with Wolfgang Puck vegetable broth.

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Elizabethsays:

24 September 2011 at 3:43 am

@Amanda — I use some salt-free, pre-made spice mixes. (The Vegetable and Salad one from President’s Choice is my fav! Italian seasoning works well too.

For soup, I find that adding baked vegetables (cook plain carrots and celery in the oven for 35 minutes) to chicken soup stock, plus onion and a bay leaf helps up the ante for flavour. (I sometimes add a few whole pepper corns as well, but it depends on your taste) Sometimes I press the liquid out of the vegetables too. You need a good 5-6 hours for chicken stock to simmer.

Sometime for stir fry I don’t use seasoning at all… I use left over plain ginger tea or add some grated ginger root (you can add garlic as well, I’m just not a garlic fan). You can also add a bit of ginger tea to soup stock too.

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elliesays:

24 September 2011 at 2:52 pm

Oh thank you thank you!! I’ve been waiting for someone to say to eat healthily instead of healthy!

Pertaining to grocery shopping, I don’t see why “healthy” foods should be more expensive. But what is “healthy”, exactly?

In some cases, organic has less nutrients than their gassed counterparts. Organic merely means the land has had no chemicals used in the last… 10 years, if that? Personally, I can’t tell the difference between a regular Banana and an Organic Banana. Or Organic Beef and regular Beef. I guess I’m just one of those individuals that “Organic” is wasted on.

There was a time when the drive through was the only way to go for me! I really don’t like to cook. Then I decided to get healthy and try to avoid or at least post pone the diseases that my parents have. Food became more about the nutrition.

While healthier eating can be more expensive it does not have to be. It has taken me a while, but I have learned how to keep the bill down and still buy healthy foods. The key? Whole foods – our meals consist of a meat, vegetable/fruit and starch. I do use some processed foods but am very picky about what is in them. For example no partially hydrogenated stuff, and no high fructose corn syrup. Shop the sales and have coupons and it is possible to make healthy eating affordable.

I think for us the time thing is a push, it really does not take me long to grill some chicken. For me it really is about the health, which will also help with costs down the road – my medical costs!

I spend a lot of money on food. No really. A lot. Like $20 for a local chicken a lot. But getting away from corporate food, supporting local farmers, and my food economy is important to me. Its part of our prioritized spending.
Honestly, that’s not something I could choose to do on a shoestring budget. I’ve tried. And its not that we eat exotic food. Lots of PB, tuna, bananas, and eggs and we are both slim people. While we are avid Farmers Market shoppers, I supplement with staples from Costco or the Grocery Outlet. We also garden and barter with friends and neighbors for food.
When I look at the $650+ we spend on groceries each month, its no wonder processed garbage food or even whole foods from deplorable sources win out. They are cheaper. We are so insulated from the ‘real cost’ of food that most of us couldnt afford such things even if we wanted to.

You’re right, but damn, I take that $20 price tag like a slap on the face. What irks me is not that there is a $20 chicken out there, it’s that often the cheaper alternative is to buy a greaseball chicken that melts in the oven under a shell of skin and has no muscle fibers (I’m looking at you, Tyson chicken oven roaster zombie meat crap). Really, why can’t we have affordable good chickens? The game appears rigged somehow, and it makes me furious.

“Affordable good chickens.” What you are seeing in the $20 chicken is what it really costs to raise and butcher meat on a small scale in an ethical manner. We’ve become very accustomed to inexpensive food, mostly through agricultural methods that would turn many into vegetarians if we saw how animals are raised. We don’t need anywhere near the amount of protein that we eat. If the $20 chickens were all that were available, we’d be more like the rest of the world who treat animal-based proteins as a condiment, and not as the centerpiece of our diet.

Agreed. Which is why I’ve resigned myself to my $20 Chicken, as long as I can afford it. I’d rather give my money to the farmer in the next county who is paying taxes and raising actual chickens, vs. the corporation producing disgusting zombie meat. In fact, if I couldnt afford it, at this point, we’d just cut out the vast majority of our meat.
And it does taste different. Even the bones are different. Chickens that run around, have a more robust skeletal structure than their factory farmed counter parts. I see that when Im eating my drumstick.
But like it or not, its a barrier. We are cut off from the real cost of food, and where it comes from, and how what we buy and who we buy it from impacts the world around us. Those decisions have perpetuated the food deserts and the processed food and the generations with no food know-how.

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El Nerdosays:

22 September 2011 at 7:15 am

I don’t know. Maybe you’re right, but I don’t like it. Take bread for example. Everywhere in the world, bread is cheap and affordable. It’s a staple of the poor . But in America, a simple loaf of real bread will cost $5. Why in the hell is that? Some stupid “artisan” tag. If you want cheap bread in America, you need to get Wonder bread or some such crap. Which is an inedible baked paste. It doesn’t have to be–this is a grain producing country! Wheat and corn abound. Chickens eat grain, and a normal chicken shouldn’t cost $20. The minimum wage is $7.25. What the hell? Something is truly warped.

There is logic there. I agree. I’ve often discussed why french wine is cheap in france, but american beer is not cheap in america. Even if its brewed right down the stinking road.
Some of it I chalk up to standard of living. Yep minimum wage is under $10 an hour, but do I think farmers should be resigned to making $10 an hour? Should that be a minimum wage profession? It’s certainly not going to attract many willing participants if it is. Shouldnt they be entitled to live just as comfortably as I do sitting on my bum in front of a computer? Paying them more also contributes to the overall health of my local economy. It might account for 100% of my $20 chicken sticker shock, but a good portion of it.
And I tend to shy away from artisan stuff. Its a segment of the market, and its good for a splurge, but real people making real everyday food is my focus.

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El Nerdosays:

22 September 2011 at 8:01 am

Oh, I’m not talking minimum wage going into the cost of the chicken raising, I’m talking about the ability of the minimum wage worker to buy a decent chicken. Sort of a Ford T argument. Why can’t everyone afford a decent chicken.

I buy my chicken at Costco, breasts only. It’s lean, it has a decent texture, it’s a huge package for under $20, and I can cook it 1000 ways.

The whole chickens don’t look so good though, so I haven’t had one in ages. I fear those greasy jello wings

Maybe if I save and invest wisely I’ll be able to have a natural normal chicken some day.

People need to return to treating meat as an occasional indulgence, not a staple for every meal. I have relatives who plan their meals around meat – it’s clear that it’s the centerpiece, when really, it should just be a side.

We are cutting down on our meat consumption in my home, and I have been able to get very creative with food as a result.

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Susansays:

22 September 2011 at 12:49 pm

Hey, I’ve been able to find whole free range chickens for $8-$10 instead of $20 by buying them at farmers markets from Amish farmers or other small-time farmers. Often they’re not able to label them “organic” officially, but you can ask about how the chickens are kept. I don’t know if this is possible in your area, but it’s been a huge savings over the organic whole chickens in the supermarket.

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Tarasays:

22 September 2011 at 2:13 pm

I’m one of those small farmers raising and selling $20 chickens, and feel like I can make some salient points here. Non-organic poultry feed is relatively inexpensive, but the cost is rapidly rising, and those chickens eat quite a lot over the course of their short lives (forget organic feed – it costs a fortune if you can get it at all). Even so, it’s not so much the feed cost that contributes to the price tag as it is the labor. We do all our processing by hand with two to four people, no one is getting paid a wage, and it’s a lot of work. It’s also rather unpleasant work, and time consuming, and tiring. Large scale operations have conveyors, machines, and an army of (often illegal) workers. There is also the cost of government compliance as applicable, which is more burdensome on smaller operations. We also pay more to the hatchery for chicks because we’re ordering a couple hundred at a time, rather than tens of thousands. All those factors combined are why your chicken costs $20. All that said, and this is the most important point, I would be THRILLED TO TEARS if I could make my chickens more affordable. I honestly want more people to be able to afford better quality food. So far, the only way to achieve that is to try and sell people on eating better meat less often. Some folks are willing, but many (I’d say most) are not. If I could find a way on my end to bring the cost down without making unacceptable sacrifices, I’d do it in a minute, and reduce my selling price. I truly would. It’s something I continually work on.

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El Nerdosays:

22 September 2011 at 6:13 pm

@ Tara – thanks for the answer and explanation.

Whenever I buy products like yours (e.g. grass fed beef) I go directly to the producer rather than buy at the store, which adds a huge markup. I can buy stew meat for $4/lb from the rancher instead of $8 (that’s the markup at the local food co-op). The problem is it’s not always easy to reach them.

I wish I knew chicken producers in Albuquerque– even though here it’s legal for anyone to raise chickens in their backyard! (I don’t have the space to do it). As it is right now, good simple chicken like the ones you raise is more of a Bird of Paradise for my budget– tastes delicious, but I can only buy it for special occasions. I DO buy the chicken livers though, and make an awesome paté. I wish I could find the giblets because they are delicious, but they don’t sell those.

Anyway, keep up the good work!

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Jan in MNsays:

22 September 2011 at 7:39 am

I can’t help but be reminded of “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” by Barbara Kingsolver – best book about food, culture, politics, and local eating that I have read in a long time. I can’t bring myself to eat mass-produced chicken anymore either. I’d rather go without something else in my budget and fork over for an organic one.

I disagree that wonder bread is part of a healthy diet. I suppose if you are talking in purely calorie count kind of way. Then yes it can be part of my 1600 to 2500. But refined starches and high fructose corn syrup? Part of a healthy diet? Really? Is that what we’ve come to?

Its almost like now healthy = gourmet = frivolous. I guess if you see what we feed our kids in school lunches, you’ll see where we get that idea from…

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KMsays:

23 September 2011 at 2:37 am

Focusing on demonizing individual ingrediants like HFCS or white bread is not going to help anyone’s health if their overall diet is not balanced and includes too many calories.

I think a lot of people just give up on trying to eat more healthy because they hear all this stuff about how eating healthy absolutely requires they to get $20 chickens, and whole grain artisan-made bread.

But the reality is that the most “unhealthy” problem that most people have with their diets is that they are too high in calories and make them gain weight. That extra weight is what causes type II diabetes, heart disease, and all the other ills of modern society.

So portion control and limiting fats will in fact do a HUGE amount to make the average non-cooking person eat more healthily, even if don’t bother with your gourmet ingrediants.

I’m a gourmet cook and I like the good stuff too, but I’d never tell someone who had never cooked before in their life that they HAD to buy and cook gourmet or just give up. It’s just not true when it comes to improving their health.

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KMsays:

22 September 2011 at 6:54 am

It absolutely is possible to eat well for little money.

I lived for years in an inner city “food desert” and I was able to make it work. While it was hard to get fresh meat, milk and fragile fruits like grapes and strawberries at the corner bodega or Korean market, cheese and basic fruits and vegetables like potatoes, carrots, onions, bananas, oranges, and apples were always available and sometimes melons too. As well as rice and pasta.

Currently I live in the rich suburbs. While it’s easier to shop, I still cook and feed my family similarly, just with more meat and milk since my kids are growing and need the protein.

I think this is a classic example of how we as a people have become out of touch with reality. Like in so many other facets of our lives today, our buttons are being pushed and manipulated like a remote control by people who want their hands on our hard-earned cash. The sad part is that most of us just buy into the hype and refuse to think for ourselves. Of course cooking your meals at home is healthier and cheaper. Even if I chose to deep fry my chicken at home, it’s still healthier and fresher than the stuff KFC would sell me. Unfortunately, we’ve been taught for decades now that the way to happiness is to get everything now because we deserve it. Restraint and effort are for suckers, unless you’re slaving it at your 9-to-5. Then it’s ok.

Cooking a decent meal need not be a buffet that takes hours to make. I live in a big city with an office job that takes most of my time, yet I still find time to make my own breakfast, lunch for the office and dinner. It’s really about ceasing the laziness and mustering the will to rid ourselves of the ideas that advertisers have been drilling into our brains for as long as we’ve been alive. Turn off your TV and cook already. Standing in the kitchen for a few minutes will help you burn some calories too!

As far as costs go, so what? If buying healthier food costs a few more bucks, should that really stop you? What you feed your body is as important as anything else you have to pay for in life. If you have to cut cable or switch from that $80 iPhone plan to something cheaper in order to afford slightly more “expensive” food, so be it. It’s going to save you a lot more money in medical bills in the long run.

We pretty recently made a switch from a heavy diet of processed food / takeout to cooking fresh food ourselves. Funny how being told you need a daily cholesterol pill at age 35 can spur a habit change.

We don’t buy organic, but we buy a ton of fruits and vegetables now, and overall our grocery bill is about the same. A big reason for that is we stopped drinking soda and drink water instead. That was enough to make up for the extra cost of produce.

We save a couple hundred a month from not eating out at lunch, not using the vending machine at work, and not getting take out a couple times a week. We might go out once a week, but even that is much cheaper now than before (since we pass on the appetizer and $3 sodas). Usually we leave thinking we should have just cooked at home since it is cheaper and tastes better.

I was sure that cooking fresh food would be a time-consuming process, but if you cook simply it is not much time at all. Every night I get home, I preheat the oven, chop fresh vegetables, toss them in olive oil, salt and pepper. Season the meat with a rub or sauce the night before, so it’s already good to go. Before the oven is ready I have time to wash and chop a couple fresh fruits and wash the knives/cutting board. All told, it is 10 minutes. Then we pop food in the oven and play or do homework with kiddo until the food is cooked. Breakfast and lunch are similarly easy, just washing a fruit, peeling back some greek yogurt, opening baby carrots, etc.

A nice benefit is we actually eat all our produce and meat the week we buy it, and we don’t have countless boxes of stuff sitting around to expire. I don’t count calories or fat because 70% of my food volume is fruit and vegetables, and almost none is processed/boxed food. I have lost 30 lbs in 5 months, no longer have a cholesterol problem, and have 10x the energy. That is partly due to starting to exercise (another change I highly recommend, but always thought of as too hard – if it is a priority, you magically find the time).

It takes some commitment to make the habit changes, but once they are made, they are not hard at all. I constantly think I should have done this sooner, but my examples of eating from my childhood and commercials made me think this would be too much work and/or terrible tasting and/or too expensive (amazingly as kids, we always had money for cable, cigarettes and soda, but fresh produce was cost prohibitive!). Lesson learned!

“Usually we leave thinking we should have just cooked at home since it is cheaper and tastes better.”

Isn’t that the kicker? It’s nice to occasionally have someone else clean up, prep the food, cook it, and then clear the table and do the dishes – but at the same time, I think I could have done it better/cheaper.

Hey Deen: re: “…not everybody can afford to pay $58 for prime rib or $650 for a bottle of wine…I cook for regular families who worry about feeding their kids and paying the bills…”
YOUR $5 CHICKEN DINNER WOULD BE $4 WITHOUT ALL THE BUTTER YOU TELL PEOPLE TO USE! Healthy eating does not have to be more expensive. Yes, organic is more expensive. BUT, keeping the butter, salt, fat and other SILENT KILLERS low IS CHEAPER!Your arguement is about as smart as your cooking.

I remember reading somewhere that one of the reasons that Americans eat less vegetables than Europeans is largely because we don’t use enough salt and butter on them. We therefore don’t like the taste of veggies and eat less of them. Let’s face it – butter tastes good! I’ve never cooked a Paula Deen recipe, and I imagine they are laden with butter and salt. But I wouldn’t demonize butter and salt. They do make things taste better, and I think they are valuable tools to actually keep people from going out. If you encourage people to throw a few tablespoons of butter and a teaspoon of salt on those green beans, they might be more tempted to stay home and eat them!You’re still likely to put less butter on your food at home than you will encounter in a restaurant.

That’s a fairly broad statement. As someone who has lived in Europe (Germany and France) I can attest that they do indeed use butter. Nothing swims in it though, and they do walk more than Americans. I think the point is that there are no “bad foods” it’s just that portions are out of control here.

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G. M. N.says:

22 September 2011 at 10:37 am

I recently heard a most interesting tidbit about salt & food. It was a nutritional site and it said you could eat all the salt you wanted to, on one condition. No processed foods. Cook all your food from scratch at home.

It does make sense as processed foods can have 10-50% of our daily sodium and the processed foods have no iodine in their sodium. And have you gotten the website “Eat This, Not That?” When it shows the sodium levels even in restaurant foods, it is over-
whelming. One sandwich can have enough sodium for 2 days for one person. Wow!!

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spiralingsnailssays:

22 September 2011 at 11:00 am

As a kid I disliked most cooked veggies. I dutifully ate them since they were ‘healthy’ but it was a chore. When I started culinary classes in highschool and did my own cooking in college, I finally understood why; I was used to frozen veggies microwaved into tasteless green mush. When I started steaming my own fresh broccoli, snapping fresh green beans, and sauteeing fresh carrots, it’s amazing how awesome vegetables became!

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Bethsays:

22 September 2011 at 2:20 pm

@Jen — you’re right, my statement was a tad ambiguous now that I re-read it! What I meant is that many Europeans have other ways to prepare vegetables without relying on butter and salt — like the olive oil on rapini my Portuguese friends prepare all the time.

I think it’s kind of silly to say that a lack of butter and salt is to blame for Americans not eating enough vegetables. I think when we find creative ways to prepare them, we enjoy them more.

Me, I’m a big fan of roasted vegetables — just toss with olive oil and your favorite spices and bake until they start to brown. It’s not a lot of extra work when you’re already throwing chicken and potatoes in the oven.

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Bethsays:

22 September 2011 at 2:25 pm

@ GMN — I actually have to add salt to my food in order to get enough sodium in my diet. I don’t eat processed foods, and seldom eat out. I do most of my own cooking and baking, so I know exactly what goes into my food.

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Janesays:

23 September 2011 at 5:04 am

Beth –
Perhaps I should have said “butter or oil”, because that was my point. I think we agree with each other here. Because veggies are healthy and butter or whatever oil is “unhealthy”, a lot of Americans feel like they should steam their vegetables and eat them plain. I’m saying just like you that if you put some additional things on it, it would taste better.

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Bethsays:

23 September 2011 at 5:21 am

@Jane, I think we’re definitely on the right page — it was just a convoluted of getting there. (Ah, the joys of online comments!)

I don’t think anyone has anything against butter (I certainly don’t–I won’t cook with margarine or the like). But adding tons of butter and sugar just for the sake of it is different than adding enough to flavor a dish. I think the argument Bourdain made was about saturated fat, sugar, etc. in excess.

Even Julia Child said in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, that she personally will use a teaspoon of butter even if a recipe calls for a tablespoon. That kind of substituting or knowing what you can cut and what you can’t comes from experience though.

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Teresasays:

22 September 2011 at 7:33 am

Healthy cooking does take a little more planning – both in preparation and in shopping. I think some people still have the perception that healthy food is gourmet food. Take a look at some of the health/clean eating magazines out there – portobellas, red bell peppers, multiple ingredients that most of us don’t stock in our pantries.
I have cooked healthy meals from scratch for almost 10 years. Since becoming a mom, I have learned to simplify and you can eat cheap and healthy when you turn to your basics. It is not expensive, it is not hard. Just takes a little more thinking than buying a box of X processed food.
As for Paula Deen – I love her. I don’t eat her every day – but there are days when comfort food and a little fat in my diet goes a long way!

Eating healthy on a budget is as much about what you don’t buy as what you do purchase. DH and I are on a tight food budget but we eat free-range meat and lots of great produce (often organic). We don’t buy processed foods, packaged treats (organic or not), sodas, etc. If you open my pantry, you’ll be lucky to find some tortilla chips to go with the salsa we make. But we eat three good meals a day and have fruit and yogurt for snacks. Since I don’t buy the processed, packaged stuff (and I wish I could afford some of it – it would be fun) I have plenty left for good wholesome food. We aren’t starving by any means. We buy good coffee, virgin olive oil for cooking, etc. Our food budget is $100 a week for two adults and that includes all cleaning and paper products for our home. It also includes basic personal care like shampoo, shower gel and razer blades.

I received one of Deen’s cookbooks (the one about cooking with kids) as a gift and I thought it would be fun to use to cook with my son but I was astounded at all the butter and sugar and white flour, etc. I have never watched her show personally and I hardly have seen Bourdain’s show (although I read 2 of his books) but I can see his point. If she has the audience, why not focus on making healthier recipes that are just as cheap to make the unhealthy ones she focuses on?

In my grocery store, the whole wheat pasta is the same price as the white kind, the bulk brown rice is a few cents more than the white rice. Also, in my family to save money, we eat a ton of beans – what is cheaper than dried beans? If you know how to boil water, you can use dry beans.

I don’t think the poor living in food desserts are even Deen’s audience (though I could be wrong, that is my assumption). If her audience has enough access to a grocery store to buy chicken, sugar, and mac and cheese ingredients, I am sure they have access to buying equally priced but better for you items as well.

My family loves Deen’s baked french toast recipe for special occasions. That said, I have modified it beyond recognition changing the amount of butter, sugar, milk instead of cream, and using homemade white whole wheat bread instead of white baguette. I would never make it all the time but it is quite nice for a birthday breakfast.

No excuse for paying $10 for a meal when you can feed your whole family healthier beans and rice for much much less. Just get a variety of sauces to serve with it and you’re set. Make a big salad on the side for your veggies, using oil and vinegar for dressing. Buy a large bag of dried beans and rice, soak beans overnight and cook in a crockpot while you are at work. This is possibly the cheapest way to live and still probably get all your sufficient nutrients. Maybe still take a multivitamin just in case. If I lost my job tomorrow, I would start eating beans and rice for lunch and dinner until I found another job. Yeah, it might get boring after awhile, but, seriously, no fast food meal is going to be cheaper and all fast food meals will be much less healthy.

For breakfast get a big bag of oatmeal and eat that with some milk, maybe add a hard boiled egg for some protein. Seriously, it’s not that hard to live really cheap if you want to. I don’t live that cheap because I have to money to eat more interesting food.

“Grow your own” doesn’t work too well if you live in an apartment or high rise condo. Many people like me can’t afford a house with a yard, and a plot in a community garden isn’t enough to see significant savings.

It works well enough for us. I’ve grown tomatoes, green beans, kale, and zucchini for years on our small apartment balcony. Fresh herbs, too. Container gardening is surprisingly easy if you find the time to plant seeds and water once in a while. (I’ve had far fewer pest problems than my friends who live in single family homes because we’re elevated from where most of the nasty garden pests live.)

One of my roommates had success with balcony container gardening, but since I moved I haven’t managed anything more than lettuce — there’s not enough sunlight and no air circulation. My plants weren’t strong enough to stand upright, and they literally cooked on hot days.

I’m lucky though — many buildings where I am don’t have balconies at all.

I’m not saying it’s impossible for apartment dwellers to grow their own food, but for many people it’s a labor of love rather than a real money saver.

We run about $3/day per person eating quite a bit of meat. Why? Because my dad has eaten 90% paleo his entire life (primarily meat driven since he lived in a rural area without access to a variety of fruits and vegetables) and at 91 y.o. is the healthiest senior I have ever seen. I’m pretty sure he’s never even eaten anything out of a box or can for that matter.

The budget killer is the better vegetarian choices – ie. most fruit in Canada is at least $.50/item or serving. Two pieces of fruit per day is 1/3 of the budget. And that my youngest son would eat a whole box of mandarin oranges in one sitting if I didn’t hide them…

As a graduate student living on less than $15,000 a year, I am easily able to eat VERY healthy, mostly vegan, overwhelmingly organic. All it takes is sales, some planning, and a prioritization of your expenses. Healthy and delicious food is much more important to me than cable, nice clothes, expensive dinners out, etc. It’s so frustrating to me when people think healthy food is out of their price range, it’s your HEALTH and WELLBEING we are talking about here! If you just care about it, it’s completely do-able.

I think you need to recognize some things about yourself. The main thing that sticks out to me is that you say you are a graduate student. This means you are educated and probably at least middle class. This also means you probably have a more flexible schedule than most. I’m not saying that you don’t have a valid point and that someone with less money can learn to eat healthy, but you need to recognize your own privilege and that some people have steeper hill to climb.

I completely see where you are coming from, and I know my education and overall interest in health has at least something to do with where I came from (a family at least somewhat interested in health, even though they are blue-collar, on a budget, and I’m the first person in my family to go to college.) But, I work 40 hours a week and am a full time student – so time and money, I do not have. I think we just need better ways to educate people about their health, if I would have learned something, anything (!) in middle school or highschool, it probably wouldn’t have taken me so long to get to where I am!

…But maybe we need to look beyond the time, availability and money aspects of it and look to the long term affects such as the health of the family and how poor food choices play into future medical costs…

The one thing that is never addressed in the discussion of fast food vs. home cooked food in relation to the poor (or working poor) is the issue of kitchens. Most of the people posting here probably have kitchens, and use them. But not all of the working poor have access to living arrangements with ktichens. Those month-to-month “apartments” in old motels? No kitchen. Renting a room out of someone’s house? Most likely there is no access to kitchen use. So even though it might be cheaper to make meals from scratch, it doesn’t mean that they have the ability to actually do it.

Not to argue with you, but we live in a middle class neighbourhood and my neighbour WONT cook! She says she would have so much more space in the kitchen for the pre-boxed lunches if there was NO STOVE!! Cooking is definitely the choice for most people.

I find all such discussions about the merits of “healthy food” completely meaningless because you cannot measure the healthiness of food. YOu can measure the healthiness of a person. You can probably even measure the healthiness of a person’s diet. You cannot measure the healthiness of an individual meal.

Are french fries unhealthy? What about when Lance Armstrong eats them?

Food is only unhealthy if it makes the person eating it unhealthy. If this isn’t happening, then what makes the food unhealthy? Lack of an “organic” label? The word “fried”? These mean nothing. No one has ever shown organic food to produce healthier people than it’s non-organic counterpart (but it is more expensive to produce), and you actually *do* need something like 2500 calories per day to sustain yourself so if a few of them came in fried fashion you’re not necessarily doing yourself any harm.

We are not a nation that is obese because we eat the wrong food, we are a nation that is obese because we eat too much food.

I totally agree with your point here, except that I think you have to concede that most Americans don’t eat too much spinach or too many beans. Yes, entire cultures thrive on wildly different types of diets. But, if everyone ate an appropriate number of calories but it came from Doritos and Twinkies, then we’d have a nation of people who had a healthy weight and serious vitamin deficiencies.

Also, your claim that people need 2500 calories a day to sustain themselves (i.e., maintain a stable weight) is flimsy. Calorie intake varies by size, % of body fat, activty, etc. (I’m sure you know this…) I’m a 5’7″ woman who weighs 130 pounds. If I ate 2500 calories a day I’d probably gain a pound or two a month. Also, if 1/3 of Americans are obese, they should probably be eating less than the calories needed to sustain themselves.

Agreed! I started gaining weight when I got a desk job due to decreased physical activity. Calorie count guidelines need to be adjusted.

Also, all calories are not created equal. Sugars, refined starches, high fat foods, etc. have been shown to increase inflammation in the body which contributes to heart disease and other illnesses. Enjoy them once in a while and we’re okay, but make them staples in our diet — even if we’re still living below our calorie means — and there’s trouble ahead.

Wether you need *exactly* 2500 calories is not the point. That’s why I say “something like” as a qualifier. If you substitute “1800″ instead of “2500″, the point still stands — you need to get those calories somewhere.

And you’re right — you could concoct such a diet that is actually unhealthy due to lack of certain vitamins. For example, a diet low enough in vitamin C will eventually cause you to get scurvy. But one, that’s not the problem we have in this country. How many people are getting scurvy due do adieu lacking vitamin C (or any other disease caused by a vitamin deficiency)? Not very many, especially compared to how many people are obese. And secondly — even though you need vitamin C, that does not mean a single meal that has none is unhealthy. This is why I can say your diet can be unhealthy but you can’t really label a single meal as such. Sure, if you eat no vitamin C, or exclusively lard, you will be unhealthy. If you have lard in one meal, or a meal with no vitamin C, it has essentially no bearing on your overall health.

The fact that people aren’t eating 2500 calories a day worth of spinach is completely irrelevant. Of course they’re not. That’s not unhealthy, it would probably be a lot more unhealthy to try and subsist entirely on spinach.

And you *can* come up with some metrics for the health of a person: age at death, number of days of work skipped annually due to health reasons, or physical performance levels (1 mile run times or such). It’s a lot harder to do the same with foods.

Besides, arguing over whether organic spinach is healthier than traditionally grown spinach in a society that’s obese because it’s consuming 600 extra calories a day in soft drinks is like standing on the deck of the titanic and arguing about whether using thicker paint would have made the hull more iceberg resistant. You end up debating minutiae that makes little to no difference when there is a giant and obvious problem at hand.

Oh, I totally misread the emphasis in your calorie sentence. I get you now, and that’s the part I agree with, as well as with your opinion that referring to a particular food as objectively healthy is useless.

“We are not a nation that is obese because we eat the wrong food, we are a nation that is obese because we eat too much food.”
This the part I don’t agree with. I think we are definitely a nation that is obese because we eat too much food. I think we are also a nation that is obese because we eat a lot of high calorie, nutritionally lacking food. And eating the same diet of high calorie, nutritionally lacking food–but eating less of it–would only solve some of our problems.

“I think we are also a nation that is obese because we eat a lot of high calorie, nutritionally lacking food.”

When I say “we eat too much food” I mean “we eat too many calories”. So yes, we are obese because we eat a lot of high-calorie food. We eat too many calories and so we are fat.

I don’t understand what you mean by:
“we are … obese because we eat a lot of … nutritionally lacking food”

This doesn’t make sense to me. Are you saying that our national collective vitamin A (or any other vitamin or calcium or whatever it is that you mean by “nutrition”) deficiency is contributing significantly to our obesity problem?

1) Such problem doesn’t exist.
2) Even if it did, it would not manifest itself through obesity.

I don’t get what people mean when they say we’re nutritionally lacking when we show no signs of being malnourished. Our big problems are all around eating too much, not lacking certain trace minerals.

Final note:
I am not implying that there is nobody in the US who is malnourished or who has dietary deficiencies. I am simply saying these happen on a *much, much* smaller scale than obesity problems.

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Carlasays:

22 September 2011 at 4:03 pm

I agree we are malnourished as a nation. We are not *starving* but we are malnourished. How many nutrients are in a typical KFC meal vs. a home cooked meal made from whole foods?

Too many Americans (especially children are deficient in vitamin D, iodine, B12 and other essential vitamins and minerals. Instead of eating fruits and vegetables (that’s not already void of nutrients), they are eating candy, fast food, processed food and other nutritionally void foods.

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Catherinesays:

22 September 2011 at 5:10 pm

Yes, our obesity problem is caused by overeating (too many calories). But it’s really really easy to eat more calories than you need when you’re eating food that is calorie dense and nutrient poor.

Let’s pretend we lived in world without Coke, or Snickers bars, or chicken nuggets. Suddenly there are no high calorie, nutritionally void food. Instead, we’re surrounded by foods that are calorie dense and high nutrient like avocados, nuts or beef (a gram of fat contains more than twice the calories as a gram of protein or carbohydrate), foods that are low-calorie and high-nutrient like spinach or carrots) and low-calorie low-nutrient like iceberg lettuce. Suddenly it becomes a lot harder to eat the amount of calories you need to become obese. The foods that are high calorie also contain protein and/or fiber which make you feel full–they’re also way more expensive than high calorie, low nutrient food like french fries or pop tarts. And the foods that are NOT calorie dense–well, just try to eat 500 calories in beans and tomatoes instead of a 500 calorie McDonald’s sandwich. It’s not easy.

The bottom line cause of the obesity epidemic is too many calories. But the plethora of super high calorie, low nutrient food that people choose to eat instead of filling up on low calorie, high nutrient food is the reason why we eat too many calories. A french fry is just a french fry, expect when it’s a super size serving of french fries in place of cup of yogurt with a half cup of blueberries; a salad with spinach, tomatoes, chickpeas, a few ounces of chicken, some olive oil; and a piece of whole wheat bread. Same calories.

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Annesays:

22 September 2011 at 9:14 am

I have to respectfully disagree with this. There are vast quantities of research demonstrating that whole foods have measurable benefits on cardiovascular health, good digestion, bone health, cancer risk, etc. and the converse effects of processed, high-glycemic foods (or “food-like substances” One may not be able to measure the “healthiness” of a particular food, but then the same holds true for people as well; e.g. is my health a 9 or a 15?

(My husband, who is an amateur grammarian, has told me many times that “healthful” means contributing to health, and “healthy” refers to the actual physical status. So healthful foods would contribute to a healthy person. But I think we all know what we mean!)

ummm, calculate the nutrient density of the food (per gram or per calorie), that is how many of your daily vitamins & minerals are available in that food or dish vs. how many calories it costs you. The denser the nutrients in the food, the healthier it is. It doesn’t matter who is eating it.

Even if Lance Armstrong is eating french fries, they are still unhealthy – he’s just doing a better job eating them in moderation then other people.

This is completely false. It makes a diet consisting entirely of multivitamins the healthiest possible diet you could eat. You would starve to death. Calories are important and you have to eat them or you’ll die. Minimum possible calories is not healthy.

Um, no, Tyler. There is quite a body of research that shows that individual nutrients (as packaged in a multivitamin, say) are NOT the way to go. It seems there is synergy in how those nutrients (and others, not found in your multi) combine in whole or at least minimally processed foods.

No one is arguing that calories don’t count. They do, both ways. But if you aren’t going to get too many, you need to eat nutrient dense foods, most of the time. Or you can eat nutrient poor foods in smaller amounts, but that is in now way a healthier choice.

But, yeah, many of us in developed nations are overfed and undernourished. Sad.

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Carlasays:

22 September 2011 at 8:17 am

You also have to take into account food intolerances, allergies and health issues. As someone who cannot eat gluten (and most other grains), soy products legumes, sugars, and a vegan diet made my hair fall out, it takes a bit of creativity to stick within a workable budget. All of the things I mentioned I cannot do is unfortunate because all of my forbidden items are very cheap, so I know I will never be able to eat on a few dollars a day.

I think most people understand cooking at home is clearly the cheaper option, but that’s not an option for some people. I’ve known poor people who lived in a one room studio (no bathroom, kitchen) whose only option was to eat out as cheaply as possible nightly. I know that’s an extreme case, but its getting more common than we care to admit.

THIS. I’ve lived under the poverty line for much of my adult life. During part of it, I lived in a studio with no stove or sink (other than the bathroom sink) and just a tiny dorm-style fridge. Cooking was impossible. I ended up eating a lot of sandwiches, because bread, peanut butter and jelly was cheap and could be stored without having a full-size fridge, and could be prepared without a kitchen.

I think this point about access to a kitchen and the subject of food deserts would be a good post. My argument is more that those who have the money, time, and equipment to cook don’t have to settle for unhealthy food just because they aren’t rich–it’s just as easy and inexpensive to use similar ingredients, and that same amount of time, to make something healthier.

In other words, why not make regular bread pudding instead of something like Krispy Kreme (sp?) bread pudding?

Hi. I got here from Zen Habits.
I’m from Europe, Romania – est-european pour contry. Not like Africa, a little bit upper Mexico.
We had a revolution 20 years ago. Democracy came and brought McDonalds, KFC and coke. And people are changing. Young generation meets at KFC…
We started having obese people, obese children – but it’s not only because of food, but also because of computer games,social media and the fear of letting children playing outside alone, like before.
Our national kitchen is a heavy one, with a lot of meat products,and fried stuff (but no corn syrup or extra sugar added!). We had fat people before. but there is a difference between the fat from traditional food, and that from fast-foods. The last one is more aerial, more plumped and is disgusting.
I choose being healthy. I’m cooking my own food: soups, salads, even pizza is healthy if you make it at home, you know what goes in it and you are eating in small amounts.
I sincerely don’t understand how a whole nation can eat out of boxes and is so ignorant over their health.
My sister moved in Canada last year. She cooks all the food for her family, even bread, like t she used to do here because this is the only way to cope with their very small budget, and she wants her 2 children to have correct eating habits. She is also a student, and has a part-time job.
It’s possible, that’s all I am saying.

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